thedrifter
08-26-07, 02:30 PM
Officer: Create permanent adviser corps
By John Milburn - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Aug 26, 2007 11:20:33 EDT
FORT RILEY, Kan. — A lieutenant colonel who’s considered an expert on fighting insurgents is working on a new idea that could change how the military does it, from his corner office on the east side of this post.
John Nagl wrote a paper this summer calling for a permanent corps of combat advisers. The group would move from conflict to conflict, so the military wouldn’t have to train new advisers from scratch.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, previously picked Nagl to help write the Army-Marine playbook on fighting insurgents. A key part of the effort is training Iraqi forces to keep the peace, so American troops can get out of an unpopular war.
Nagl (pronounced Noggle) thinks more about future conflicts than present ones, but military leaders have another incentive. Congress is watching.
“We will not succeed in our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan without the Iraqi and Afghan security forces being able to secure themselves,” Gen. George Casey, the Army’s chief of staff and the previous top commander in Iraq, said during a recent visit to Fort Riley.
Nagl led a tank platoon in Desert Storm in 1991 and returned to Iraq in 2003 as an operations officer for 1st Battalion, 34th Armor. He now commands that unit, and it trains U.S. advisers headed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
He’s also a West Point graduate and Rhodes Scholar who holds a doctorate in international relations from Oxford.
His dissertation there became a book, “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife,” an analysis of insurgent wars from Malaysia to Vietnam. The title comes from a description by Lawrence of Arabia of what it’s like to fight insurgents. Nagl cites Lawrence’s World War I-era insights frequently.
Nagl channeled his own military experience into his paper calling for a permanent combat adviser corps. He believes that if it’s done properly, the 20,000 soldiers in such a corps could be all the U.S. would need to commit to a future war.
“The enemy gets a vote, and we have to be prepared for whatever kind of war our enemy chooses to fight us in,” Nagl said.
Presently, Fort Riley trains Army, Navy and Air Force members to be advisers. The Marines do their training at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Fort Riley has groomed 3,700 advisers for Iraq and Afghanistan. Seven hundred more are in training.
The majority at Fort Riley are assigned to adviser slots, though others have volunteered to further their careers.
Nagl said if the current system continues, combat brigades won’t be as effective because they’ll lose good leaders to adviser teams. Meanwhile, the Army still won’t produce enough good advisers, he said.
“Unfortunately, the Army and the nation have rarely given sufficient priority to the advisory teams they embed in host-nation forces,” Nagl wrote in his proposal.
He notes that in Vietnam, the adviser program was kept so isolated from other operations that it became “The Other War.”
And, he said, the current system is flawed because some soldiers training the advisers have little experience themselves. For example, junior sergeants frequently mentor teams stacked with senior sergeants and officers.
But Nagl’s plan faces a big obstacle: The Army doesn’t have 20,000 idled soldiers to form his corps.
Though the Army will grow to almost 550,000 in coming years, those soldiers are needed for combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Defense Department has extended Army combat tours to 15 months.
Taking 20,000 for a new adviser corps means those deployment policies might not be reversed any time soon.
But Nagl believes his plan would allow the military to avoid deploying large numbers of troops for extended periods. A capable cadre of advisers could help another nation’s military or police keep insurgents at bay.
Maj. Gen. Carter Ham, a former Fort Riley commander now heading to the Pentagon, said the military has learned it can’t do the advising job with “a pickup team.”
“Somewhere in the Army there’s going to be a unit, a headquarters, a school, something that the Army says, ‘You are going to be the center of excellence for foreign security development’,” Ham said.
And there’s little doubt among Army leaders that advisers will be important in fighting future conflicts.
Army Secretary Pete Geren said: “I’d be surprised if we ever find ourselves in a war, in our lifetimes, where this will not be a key part in that effort.”
Ellie
By John Milburn - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Aug 26, 2007 11:20:33 EDT
FORT RILEY, Kan. — A lieutenant colonel who’s considered an expert on fighting insurgents is working on a new idea that could change how the military does it, from his corner office on the east side of this post.
John Nagl wrote a paper this summer calling for a permanent corps of combat advisers. The group would move from conflict to conflict, so the military wouldn’t have to train new advisers from scratch.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, previously picked Nagl to help write the Army-Marine playbook on fighting insurgents. A key part of the effort is training Iraqi forces to keep the peace, so American troops can get out of an unpopular war.
Nagl (pronounced Noggle) thinks more about future conflicts than present ones, but military leaders have another incentive. Congress is watching.
“We will not succeed in our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan without the Iraqi and Afghan security forces being able to secure themselves,” Gen. George Casey, the Army’s chief of staff and the previous top commander in Iraq, said during a recent visit to Fort Riley.
Nagl led a tank platoon in Desert Storm in 1991 and returned to Iraq in 2003 as an operations officer for 1st Battalion, 34th Armor. He now commands that unit, and it trains U.S. advisers headed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
He’s also a West Point graduate and Rhodes Scholar who holds a doctorate in international relations from Oxford.
His dissertation there became a book, “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife,” an analysis of insurgent wars from Malaysia to Vietnam. The title comes from a description by Lawrence of Arabia of what it’s like to fight insurgents. Nagl cites Lawrence’s World War I-era insights frequently.
Nagl channeled his own military experience into his paper calling for a permanent combat adviser corps. He believes that if it’s done properly, the 20,000 soldiers in such a corps could be all the U.S. would need to commit to a future war.
“The enemy gets a vote, and we have to be prepared for whatever kind of war our enemy chooses to fight us in,” Nagl said.
Presently, Fort Riley trains Army, Navy and Air Force members to be advisers. The Marines do their training at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Fort Riley has groomed 3,700 advisers for Iraq and Afghanistan. Seven hundred more are in training.
The majority at Fort Riley are assigned to adviser slots, though others have volunteered to further their careers.
Nagl said if the current system continues, combat brigades won’t be as effective because they’ll lose good leaders to adviser teams. Meanwhile, the Army still won’t produce enough good advisers, he said.
“Unfortunately, the Army and the nation have rarely given sufficient priority to the advisory teams they embed in host-nation forces,” Nagl wrote in his proposal.
He notes that in Vietnam, the adviser program was kept so isolated from other operations that it became “The Other War.”
And, he said, the current system is flawed because some soldiers training the advisers have little experience themselves. For example, junior sergeants frequently mentor teams stacked with senior sergeants and officers.
But Nagl’s plan faces a big obstacle: The Army doesn’t have 20,000 idled soldiers to form his corps.
Though the Army will grow to almost 550,000 in coming years, those soldiers are needed for combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Defense Department has extended Army combat tours to 15 months.
Taking 20,000 for a new adviser corps means those deployment policies might not be reversed any time soon.
But Nagl believes his plan would allow the military to avoid deploying large numbers of troops for extended periods. A capable cadre of advisers could help another nation’s military or police keep insurgents at bay.
Maj. Gen. Carter Ham, a former Fort Riley commander now heading to the Pentagon, said the military has learned it can’t do the advising job with “a pickup team.”
“Somewhere in the Army there’s going to be a unit, a headquarters, a school, something that the Army says, ‘You are going to be the center of excellence for foreign security development’,” Ham said.
And there’s little doubt among Army leaders that advisers will be important in fighting future conflicts.
Army Secretary Pete Geren said: “I’d be surprised if we ever find ourselves in a war, in our lifetimes, where this will not be a key part in that effort.”
Ellie